“Nothing with the Budweiser name on it had ever failed.”īy 1981, however, with Miller Lite sales accelerating, the pressure was too great to resist. Busch III, the great-grandson of the founder, Adolphus Busch, viewed Budweiser as the company’s “crowning glory” and the family’s heritage. “They didn’t want to hang their company on it,” says William Knoedelseder, the author of Bitter Brew, a history of the Anheuser-Busch dynasty. But the company was reluctant to release a light version of Budweiser, America’s best-selling beer. Coors brought back Coors Light, and Anheuser-Busch debuted Natural Light and Michelob Light in 19, respectively. Miller Lite became a hit, shipping 5 million barrels in its first full year. The message was: Guys can drink light beer too! It worked. Miller Lite went national in 1975 with an advertising onslaught featuring professional athletes selling men on a lager that tasted great and was less filling. Miller seems to have been the first company to discover that having success with light lager is less about how it’s brewed than about how it’s marketed. (In 2008, Anheuser-Busch merged with the Belgian conglomerate InBev to form Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer.) They were quickly proved wrong. “We think our beer is light enough,” the company’s vice president of brewing said at the time. It would be the first truly mass-market American light beer.Įxecutives at Anheuser-Busch, Budweiser’s parent company, were skeptical. After Meister Bräu went bankrupt in 1972, Miller Brewing bought the brand, reformulated it, and reintroduced it as the 96-calorie Miller Lite. Owades, Rheingold’s in-house biochemist, then shared the recipe with Chicago’s Meister Bräu, where it became “ lusty, full strength” Meister Bräu Lite. Rheingold released Gablinger’s in 1967, positioning it as a diet drink for calorie-conscious women. The real story of light beer begins in the 1960s, when Brooklyn’s Rheingold Brewery developed a low-calorie, zero-carbohydrate beer using a process invented by the Swiss chemist Hersch Gablinger. That brand was quickly discontinued, however, because of World War II grain shortages. H umans have fermented beer for millennia, but American light beer only dates to the early 1940s, when Coors Brewing Company introduced Coors Light. If Bud Light doesn’t appeal to people, they “can very easily find something that does.” “We have the most diverse collection of drinkers in the country’s history, who get to choose from the most diverse collection of beverage alcohol brands that have ever existed,” says Bryan Roth, the editor of the alcoholic-beverage newsletter Sightlines. James Surowiecki: The bitter truth about the Bud Light boycott Even when it is, no law of nature requires Americans to prefer Bud Light over similarly bland competitors. Grabbing a light lager is hardly today’s drinking default. There are more than 9,500 craft breweries in the country turning out flavorful IPAs and fruited sour ales-the antithesis of light lager-and beer faces ever-stiffer competition from cocktails, wine, spirits, and seltzers. America no longer shares a united taste for beer. The truth, however, is that its dominance was never as secure as it appeared, and the boycott merely accelerated an existing trend. Bud Light had been so popular, for so long, that its sudden decline seemed unthinkable. By one measure, at least, Bud Light was officially no longer America’s most popular beer. By June, the Mexican lager Modelo Especial had claimed the top spot in retail sales, according to the market-research firm NielsenIQ. Kid Rock filmed himself blasting cases of Bud Light with a rifle. The troubles started in April, when the brand unveiled a sponsorship deal with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, sparking a massive anti-trans backlash. Bud Light has been America’s best-selling beer since 2001, but its run at the top finally seems to be ending. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday.
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